[Mb-civic] Smile if (and Only if) You're Conservative - George F. Will - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Smile if (and Only if) You're Conservative

By George F. Will
Thursday, February 23, 2006; A19

To bemused conservatives, it looks like yet another example of analytic 
overkill by the intelligentsia -- a jobs program for the (mostly 
liberal) academic boys (and girls) in the social sciences, whose 
quantitative tools have been brought to bear to prove the obvious.

A survey by the Pew Research Center shows that conservatives are happier 
than liberals -- in all income groups. While 34 percent of all Americans 
call themselves "very happy," only 28 percent of liberal Democrats (and 
31 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats) do, compared with 47 
percent of conservative Republicans. This finding is niftily 
self-reinforcing: It depresses liberals.

Election results do not explain this happiness gap. Republicans have 
been happier than Democrats every year since the survey began in 1972. 
Married people and religious people are especially disposed to 
happiness, and both cohorts vote more conservatively than does the 
nation as a whole.

People in the Sun Belt -- almost entirely red states -- have sunnier 
dispositions than Northerners, which could have as much to do with 
sunshine as with conservatism. Unless sunshine makes people happy, which 
makes them conservative.

Such puzzles show why social science is not for amateurs. Still, one 
cannot -- yet -- be prosecuted for committing theory without a license, 
so consider a few explanations of the happiness gap.

Begin with a paradox: Conservatives are happier than liberals because 
they are more pessimistic. Conservatives think the Book of Job got it 
right ("Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward"), as did Adam 
Smith ("There is a great deal of ruin in a nation"). Conservatives 
understand that society in its complexity resembles a giant Calder 
mobile -- touch it here and things jiggle there, and there, and way over 
there. Hence conservatives acknowledge the Law of Unintended 
Consequences, which is: The unintended consequences of bold government 
undertakings are apt to be larger than, and contrary to, the intended ones.

Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. 
First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not 
about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong, they are happy 
to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith 
in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of 
fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is 
inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.

The right to pursue happiness is the essential right that government 
exists to protect. Liberals, taking their bearings, whether they know it 
or not, from President Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 State of the Union 
address, think the attainment of happiness itself, understood in terms 
of security and material well-being, is an entitlement that government 
has created and can deliver.

On Jan. 3, 1936, FDR announced that in 34 months his administration had 
established a "new relationship between government and people." Amity 
Shlaes, a keen student of FDR's departure from prior political premises, 
says, "The New Deal had a purpose beyond curing the Depression. It was 
to make people look to Washington for help at all times." Henceforth the 
federal government would be permanently committed to serving a large 
number of constituencies: "Occasional gifts to farmers or tariffs for 
business weren't enough." So, liberals: Smile -- you've won.

Nevertheless, normal conservatives -- never mind the gladiators of talk 
radio; they are professionally angry -- are less angry than liberals. 
Liberals have made this the era of surly automobile bumpers, millions of 
them, still defiantly adorned with Kerry-Edwards and even Gore-Lieberman 
bumper stickers, faded and frayed like flags preserved as relics of 
failed crusades. To preserve these mementos of dashed dreams, many 
liberals may be forgoing the pleasures of buying new cars -- another 
delight sacrificed on the altar of liberalism.

But, then, conscientious liberals cannot enjoy automobiles because there 
is global warming to worry about, and the perils of corporate-driven 
consumerism, which is the handmaiden of bourgeoisie materialism. And 
high-powered cars (how many liberals drive Corvettes?) are metaphors 
(for America's reckless foreign policy, for machismo rampant, etc.). And 
then there is -- was -- all that rustic beauty paved over for highways. 
(And for those giant parking lots at exurban mega-churches. The less 
said about them the better.) And automobiles discourage the egalitarian 
enjoyment of mass transit. And automobiles, by facilitating suburban 
sprawl, deny sprawl's victims -- that word must make an appearance in 
liberal laments; and lament is what liberals do -- the uplifting 
communitarian experience of high-density living. And automobiles . . .

You see? Liberalism is a complicated and exacting, not to say grim and 
scolding, creed. And not one conducive to happiness.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/22/AR2006022202012.html
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